Chapter Twenty-One

"Let go of me!" Charlotte screamed, kicking out at the two men who outweighed her four times over.

"Not a chance, la fille."

"Father, please," Tessa called, bending to pick Bann up. He nestled his face into the space between her neck and shoulder, his body limp.

The two men who'd been coming for Eagan leaned over the side. "La petite fille is clinging to the rowboat. I don't see the Scotsman." He turned back, disappointment on his rough features. "He's dead and sinking."

The proclamation tightened through Tessa's stomach. Eagan. No. Please be alive.

The other man grinned at Tessa. "But we have your daughter, Captain." He leered at her as if anticipating how Jandeau would punish her. He rubbed his mouth, his skin pale. "My friends are all puking or shiting themselves because of you."

Jandeau hauled her up against his hard frame. The smell of perfume and sweat assailed her, making all the hairs on her body stand high. Her stomach heaved. She breathed the salt breeze, trying to keep from vomiting.

"Give up the lad," Jandeau said near her ear, and a crewman pulled Bann from her arms. The boy looked panic stricken and couldn't catch his breath. He was still weak with fever and had no fight in his slim arms.

"Shall we go after the girl below?" one sailor asked, looking over the edge.

"Leave her," Jandeau said; the rumble of his voice would fuel Tessa's nightmares. "My daughter and I have a meeting to attend. Bring the other two."

Her father's hand was an iron manacle around Tessa's wrist, and he strode toward the front of the ship. She trotted to keep from stumbling and being dragged, her heart pounding as she tried to keep the tears from coming. Was Eagan dead?

When they reached the starboard side, hope shot up through Tessa. A ship nearly as large as her father's galleon pulled closer, the sails being lowered to slow it. The shadows had lightened with the coming dawn, and the dark-colored sails made the ship hard to spot. She'd seen them before lowered and tied at the Macquarie Clan's port on Wolf Isle. 'Twas a Macquarie ship!

Before her father could do anything to stop her, Tessa cupped her mouth with her free hand. "Eagan's been shot! He's in the sea!"

Jandeau whipped her around, and she squelched a cry at the pain in her shoulder, the joint ridiculously vulnerable. She stared out at the ship, the rising sun glinting across the shining brass against the black sails like a cat's eyes in candle flame.

Jandeau bent to speak close to her ear. "I have unfinished business with all the Macquaries. Thanks to you, daughter, they've come to me and will die."

Tessa inhaled through her nose to calm herself. She strained her eyes to see if anyone was trying to get to Eagan. Had they heard her? Her gaze moved from person to person until she recognized someone. Eliza, Beck's wife, stood along the side, a crossbow perched in her arms.

"Ah, Cherie, Eliza," Jandeau yelled across. "You've come to visit."

"You depraved, stinking whoremonger," Eliza called back. "We've come to rescue the children you stole and Tessa."

"My daughter," Jandeau indicated her, "is named Claudette Tempest Lemaire. Her whore of a mother called her Tessa Ainsworth."

A commotion made several crewmen of the Macquaries' ship run toward the port. Tessa's gaze followed them, and she squinted to see a head above the waterline, one arm holding a rope. "Eagan," she whispered, but shouted it in her heart. He wasn't sinking to the cold, dark bottom of the sea.

Two Macquarie brothers, the stoic leader Adam and dark-haired Callum, dove over the side of the ship. Surfacing, Callum came up next to Eagan while Adam stroked toward the rowboat where Grace sat, desperately trying to use the oars that were as large as her.

Crack! Tessa jumped, and Charlotte yelped at the pistol's discharge. A ringing sound shot through her ears, muting the sound of the wind. One of the pirate crew had fired at Eagan. He was exposed against the ship as he tried to climb with one arm, Callum under him. Suddenly, even with two heavy Highlanders hanging on the rope, it was pulled upward quickly, the two Macquaries holding on with their legs and arms. First Eagan and then Callum were lifted over the side by many hands.

"Dieu merci," Tessa murmured, her eyes shutting briefly, but opening to see Adam pulling the rowboat across from the water. Grace was lying completely flat in the hull while Adam dragged her around the back of the ship to the other side so there'd be no clear shot as the child was raised. Grace and Eagan had made it.

The world lightened, and Tessa could see Eagan's drenched frame as he stood at the rail, Drostan and another of their crew working on the gunshot in his shoulder. Eagan's face was taut, his brows bent in fury and focus. She knew he wished he was still there to help her, Charlotte, and Bann, but what could he do? He'd have just been another piece for Jandeau to use to bargain with or torture for his amusement.

"He didn't die after all, daughter," Jandeau whispered at her ear. "It seems he will continue to hurt as he watches you sail away from him."

She didn't reply, and he straightened, signaling to his men. "No matter, Macquaries. I have what I wanted." He pulled Tessa against him as if giving her a hug. "Plus two extra." The crewmen pushed Charlotte toward the rail, Bann holding onto her skirts.

Adam Macquarie came to stand beside Eagan, both of them now without their tunics as dry ones were brought. But Drostan was busy wrapping Eagan's large shoulder. Men on either side of Eliza and Adam held muskets trained on the few crewmen along the deck. Beck was arguing with Eliza.

"Don't shoot," was all Tessa could make out. If they started shooting, then others would follow, and Charlotte and Bann could be hit. Did they notice the missing pirates?

"Release Charlotte and Bann of the Macquarie Clan," Adam pronounced, his voice like thunder. "And Claudette Tempest Ainsworth."

"Mon Dieu," Jandeau called across. "You would wrench apart a father and daughter just when they've been reunited." She could feel the thrum of her father's voice against her back since he held her so tightly. His lies made her spine itch with cold.

He made it sound like Tessa had longed to be with him. Well, hadn't she? She'd dreamed of her father returning all her life, and when he did in France, she thought he was her golden savior. She'd watched for him daily from Wolf Isle, hoping and praying to see his ship on the horizon.

She shook her head, but Jandeau's other hand clasped the back of her neck and pinched it like a vise. She grimaced. Could Eagan see her features? If he saw her in pain, he might act irrationally. She concentrated on keeping her face smooth.

Jandeau's mouth dipped back to her ear, and she cringed, trying to move away from his hot breath, but she couldn't. "Tell them you wish to stay with me."

"Eagan knows I want nothing to do with you."

Instead of anger, he chuckled. "Oh, but you said you loved me when I came for you, Claudette. You dined with me and pretended to be an obedient child." He tsked. "Girls are so inconsistent."

"I despise what you really are, now that I know it to be fully true. A pirate and cruel stealer of children. I so wanted to believe otherwise." Her voice came with the strength of conviction. She would not let herself live under his thumb.

"You've forgotten commander, wealthy businessman, and your father." The talons on her nape loosened, and he stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. "Your blood runs thick with me. If a Macquarie wants you, 'tis only because they want to punish me. They'd have no other use for you, la fille."

It was a lie. Eagan knew she was Jandeau's daughter and still came to rescue her, risking his life to sneak onboard. He came for the children. A little voice slithered through her mind. But he'd forgiven her for not believing him. Hadn't he?

"My daughter came with me willingly," Jandeau called across. "She is mine again, and I will see to her comforts."

And torture.

"'Tis a delusion," Eagan called back. "And ye're mad if ye think Tessa wishes to stay with ye."

Off to the right, Tessa saw Grace peeking over the rail of the ship. She was wrapped in a wool blanket.

"Tell them, Claudette," Jandeau spoke in her ear, and she imagined she felt spittle coming with the words.

"Kill me here then, for I won't lie." She'd rather die than leave with Jandeau, but her desire to live, to touch Eagan again, to tell him what she'd realized when he was shot, all of that made her quake where she stood. She hated Jandeau even more for making her act weak. She closed her eyes, tipping her chin higher. "Slice my throat then."

"Stubborn," he murmured. He pulled her tighter around the waist until she almost couldn't breathe. "I'll let the others go if you tell them you want to stay with me."

She twisted, catching sight of his face. "You'll let them go over to their ship? Charlotte and Bann?"

"Oui. I swear it."

Adam was yelling more demands over as Tessa's mind whirled. Her hand came up over Jandeau's arm to rest on her mother's crushed golden locket under her bodice. It sat above the valley of her breasts, and her fingers traced the birdcage outline.

Her mother, too, had tried to escape from the life she'd been left to endure without a husband. She'd felt trapped like the bird in the cage, a golden cage at court. Rebecca had done everything she could to keep her daughter safe, tying herself to powerful men even though it led to her death. Now Tessa was trying to keep these young souls safe. A tear slipped from her eye. Like her mother, she would give up her freedom and happiness, her very life, to save these innocent children.

"Say it," Jandeau hissed in her ear, "and the children go free right now."

Tessa stared at him instead of looking across. "I wish to stay with my father."

"Louder," he said, pushing her shoulder so hard she spun to face Eagan where he stood across from her. "Claudette has something to tell you. A change of heart it seems."

She cleared her throat against the tightness. No matter what she said, Eagan would know the truth anyway. "My father will send the children across to you, but I wish to stay."

"Stay where?" Jandeau prompted quietly. "Say it."

The sight of Eagan across from her turned watery as tears swelled in her eyes. She let them fall freely but didn't acknowledge them. He knows I'm lying. She wanted to jump over and swim to him. Swim to him or drown. Anything rather than stay here tortured by the man who was supposed to rescue and love her as his flesh and blood daughter.

"Say it!" Jandeau hissed, his fingers biting into her arm while his other arm squeezed around her middle.

"I wish to stay with my father here on his ship," she called out. Mon Dieu!

Eagan stared back. "I will follow ye across the globe. I won't let ye leave me. I cannot. We can marry." Adam pulled his arm, his lips moving rapidly, but the sound didn't carry. Eagan yanked his arm out of his eldest brother's grasp. "I'll follow ye to the end of the earth, Tessa."

Jandeau stiffened behind her. "A Macquarie pup demands to marry my daughter." His hand slid down from under her breasts to sit over Tessa's abdomen. The caress felt incestuous. Tessa choked back the bile rising in her as his lips brushed her ear. "Mon Dieu. Could you, by chance, be carrying a Macquarie bastard, daughter?"

…

Eagan's hand curled so tightly around the rail of the Calypso that his fingers ached along with the throbbing in his shoulder where they'd left the shot. There was no time to remove the embedded ball. His teeth clenched as he stared across the water to the Bourreau . Foking Jandeau held Tessa before him like a shield, knowing that they didn't dare fire or shoot at him with her there.

"He's whispering things into her ear," Adam said next to him.

"Threats obviously," Callum said on the other side.

Eagan kept his gaze on her. "He's making her lie. If we leave her, he'll torture her and let his men at her."

"Bloody vicious devil," Callum said.

Drostan pointed. "Fok, that's Sia climbing the rigging."

"The cat ran when Tessa took her from Grace," Eagan said.

"If she ducks," Eliza said, still holding her crossbow steady and aimed, "I can shoot him right through the skull." She spoke of Jandeau of course, the man who'd killed her parents, stolen her baby brother, and pursued her for years. Every minute or so she lowered the bow to relax her muscles, but then she raised and aimed quickly again.

"If I yell ‘duck' across, Jandeau won't allow her to," Eagan said without taking his eyes off Tessa. "He's got her around the waist and maybe the back of her neck." She kept grimacing as if he were hurting her, and her eyes glistened in the rising sun as if they swam with tears. He'd never seen Tessa cry, and it tore at him.

"She's saying something," Eliza said.

"Take Charlotte and Bann, too, but…I will stay with my father." Tessa's gaze remained tethered to Eagan's. "I never cared for you, Eagan Macquarie. I am…nothing but a whore and belong with my father. 'Tis his blood and that of my whoring mother that run through me. I'm not pregnant, so leave me here. Take the children."

Even though he knew she was repeating what Jandeau told her to say, her words, said in her lyrical voice rocked through Eagan. She told me she loves me. He'd heard it as he went over the side of the ship. Even the freezing water and pain of the shot couldn't wipe it from his mind.

"He's telling her what to say," Adam said.

"She doesn't mean any of it, brother," Drostan said.

"I know." Eagan met her gaze, trying to pass strength to her across the water. He hated that he'd left her there. If anything worse happened to her, it would haunt him forever.

Callum cursed again. "She's sacrificing herself for the children."

Eagan knew all of this. "I'm not leaving her."

"She might be with child, and that's why Jandeau wants her so badly," Callum said. "He knows a bastard will doom our clan."

"Pregnant or not, I'm not leaving her with him," Eagan said. "She'll kill herself rather than be with him."

"Do we have a deal, Chief Macquarie?" Jandeau said, and his gaze rose slightly higher to the upper deck where Beck had returned to keep his crew ready. "Captain Macquarie? Claudette, my daughter, who is legally mine, stays with me in exchange for these two? That's a good price. I could get a high sum for the virgin girl and the boy." Jandeau shrugged. "If he survives the fever weakening him."

Behind Eagan, Grace cried softly, one of the crewmen by her side. "Bann is ill with fever," Eagan said. "Tessa gave him some feverfew."

"Tessa has potions with her?" Adam asked.

"She did but then used most of it to poison the crew," Eagan said, his mind still partially paralyzed by watching Tessa suffer.

"Most of the crew is poisoned?" Beck asked, coming up behind him.

"Mother Grissell says plants can work better than steel in some cases," Grace said. "Many of the pirates are unconscious or sick."

"That's why there are only"—Callum counted in a whisper—"eight of them at the rail."

"Hubert ate the stew, too, and passed out on Tessa's bed," Grace continued.

"Hubert?" Beck asked.

"He's a pirate Tessa convinced to help us," Eagan said, his words coming faster. "Most of the pirates are poisoned. We need to act."

Tessa's dark hair moved in the wind, reminding him of the thick branches of the willow tree in Gylin's bailey. It matched Jandeau's dark hair, but that's where their similarities ended. It didn't matter what blood ran in her. Tessa was a courageous, kind, beautiful woman. Daingead . He wouldn't let her go. He couldn't.

"Do we have a deal?" Jandeau yelled across. "Leave me and my daughter alone, and we will leave you and Wolf Isle alone."

"Lies," Callum murmured. "Everything that comes out of his foul mouth is a lie."

"Aye," Adam called back. "Send the children over."

Eagan didn't question his older brother. He would get the children back before attacking. With the possibility of Tessa being pregnant with a Macquarie child, his brother would never let her leave. Eagan was thankful he and Tessa had slept together. If they hadn't, he'd still go after her, but with the curse pressuring his brothers, he knew they'd help. Maybe they'd help even without the curse hanging like an ax over their necks.

"Row the boat back, and I'll have them climb down," Jandeau said.

"And Sia, my cat," Tessa yelled. "She must go, too."

Jandeau's face contorted, and he spoke to her. Eagan couldn't hear him, but Tessa faced them, and her words carried. "I can climb up and retrieve her."

"He's not letting her get the cat," Drostan said, his voice hard. "Sia climbs everything, and she never comes down without someone offering up their body for her to cling onto with her pointy claws."

Beck called down to his two crewmen who'd entered the dinghy after Grace was handed out, and they began to row back across while the line of Macquarie crewmen held muskets and bows ready to fire. Bloody hell! Tessa was right in the crossfire.

"Don't shoot," Eagan said down the line at the Calypso's rail.

"Unless they must," Callum added.

Jandeau said something and the brutes holding Charlotte and Bann pushed them down the rail toward a rope ladder that was being thrown over. It was an eight-to-ten-foot drop to the water, and the impact if one of them fell into the icy water would deliver a dangerous shock. He knew personally how it stole one's breath.

Eagan heard Tessa calling to Sia even though Jandeau still held her before him at the rail.

"The cat won't come to calling," Drostan said, frustration heavy in his voice. He called out, "Send one of yer crew up the mast so the cat can come down. It will cry up there and drive ye mad otherwise."

Jandeau said something, and a wiry man ran over to the main mast, climbing quickly up the tall pole. Meanwhile, Charlotte was helping Bann climb down before her on the ladder that kept turning, almost throwing them off it into the sea.

"Wait for the cat," Drostan yelled out to the men in the dinghy. "Lia will be distraught if she's left."

"How are we getting Tessa off?" Eagan said, his voice low.

"We'll attack as soon as the children are safely on the Calypso ," Adam said and looked at Beck. "'Tis yer ship. Whenever ye say, we attack with cannon and muskets."

"We could hit Tessa," Eagan said.

"She doesn't look chained to Jandeau," Drostan said. Lia had been chained to the pirate captain and then to a cannonball to make her sink if she tried to leap overboard. "She won't sink if she jumps."

"I'll start swimming as soon as the first blast hits them," Eagan said and looked to his second oldest brother, Beck. "Hit away from her for the first round."

"Ye only have one working arm," Adam said. "I'll go."

Eliza snorted, lowering her bow to watch, her eyes raised up the mast. "The cat is feisty and likes French pirates as little as we do."

The man had reached the top and stretched out over the yard that would hold the main sail out if it were unfurled. His colorful curses filtered down while Sia hissed from her spot near the end of his reach.

"Sia!" Tessa called out uselessly.

As if deciding to live, the cat trotted forward along the wooden arm and leaped, hissing, onto the man's face. Eagan could almost feel the sharp prickles that erupted over the pirate's forehead and chin as the fuzzy stomach pressed over his mouth and nose. One of his arms flew off the ladder, and he almost fell to the deck below. His cries of surprise were muffled with the cat's stomach pressed against his mouth. "Get it off! Merde!"

"Descendre, you buffoon," Jandeau called.

The man pushed the cat up his face to his head, Sia scratching him, and the man cursed. It looked like he had a cap on his head made from a cat's hide. Ears back, the cat looked feral and ready to bite. It hissed as the man climbed quickly down the mast.

The crewman strode over to Jandeau. "This cat's a devil!"

Eagan could see the red slashes on the man's cheeks and eyebrows. Blood dripped from one of them, leaving a trail into his dark, unkempt beard.

"I'd throw it to the sharks," the crewman said.

As if she understood, if not the words, then the threat in his hard tone, Sia leaped. They all stood rapt along the Calypso's rail as the cat landed, not on Tessa but on Jandeau's face.